The oil and gas company linked to a deadly house explosion in Firestone last April told Rocky Mountain PBS that some of its equipment was a “contributing factor” in the blast.

The federal investigation that will officially determine the cause of the incident, however, may last another five to ten months, according to a spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board.

“It was devastating to our folks at every level,” said John Christiansen, the vice president of corporate communications for Anadarko, the company that owned the infrastructure at the time of the blast. “This is a company that has always put safety first and protection of the environment, and to have something like this occur in a place where our employees live and work [is] hard to describe.”

Risks Known For Years

State regulators and local legislators have known about about risks associated with flowlines for several years.

In 1996, the state required operators to annually pressure test flowlines to check for problems. But it wasn’t until 2016 – twenty years later – when Colorado regulators started auditing companies to make sure they were complying with state rules.

“I’ll admit a pang of guilt because we asked for a report. The report came out. It predicted almost exactly what happened,” said Democrat state Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Boulder, who sponsored legislation that led to the assessment.

What Happened

Local fire investigators in Firestone initially said a cut, abandoned flowline, connected to an active well, leaked a volatile mixture of gas into Mark Martinez’s basement. Martinez was in that basement, working with Joey Irwin, his brother-in-law, to replace a malfunctioning water heater.

“No one really foresaw this as a potential issue,” Christiansen said of the chain of events that are suspected to be linked to the blast. “And I think going forward, there is no question there is a heightened degree of awareness around it and a need to do better.”

Christiansen said Anadarko is working to increase the frequency of integrity testing on flowlines within 300 feet of a building. Currently, the state regulation requires testing at least once a year.

The company also temporarily closed and tested more than 3,000 wells after the explosion and completely eliminated a type of flowline, called a return line, from operations that were configured in the same way as the pipeline linked to the explosion.

Meanwhile, state regulators are preparing for a public rulemaking hearing in January, to address proposed changes and enhancements to Colorado’s flowline rules.

The Rules

There are still many questions about the flowline linked to the explosion, including how it was cut, why it was connected to an active well, and whether it was properly abandoned in accordance with state regulations.

However, there are few historical records on file with regulators showing when and how flowlines have been taken in and out of service. Colorado did not require oil and gas operators to file records with the state regarding the abandonment of flowlines until 2005.

A properly abandoned line would need to be disconnected from both the pressure source and the receiving source, said Matt Lepore, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. It would also have to be flushed and capped on both ends, he said.

At the time of the explosion, the questionable flowline was connected to an active well.

“Was it disconnected originally, as it should have been, and then reconnected for some reason?” Lepore questioned. “We don’t know the answer to that, but it clearly should not have been connected to the wellhead.”

In response to the tragedy in Firestone, regulators asked operators to report GPS data for their flowlines near buildings.

The state has never made a map publicly available showing the exact location and status of tens of thousands of flowlines affiliated with oil and gas operations using that data.

Inside Energy plotted those points on a map. In this map, we’ve taken the start and end points of each flowline and drawn a line between them so you can see the approximate flowline locations. Data is not available on the exact flowline routes. Zoom in for more detail. For a description of how we cleaned the data to prepare it for mapping, read our data notes.

New proposed state regulations would require companies to report GPS information and provide a schematic drawing of their flowlines to the state.

Lepore said there are limits to the preventative powers of any regulatory body.

“There is definitely an element of reliance on operators to self police and to follow the rules the way they’re written,” he said. “We can’t prevent everything.”

However, another proposed regulatory change to be reviewed early next year would allow a commission representative “to witness the integrity testing process and results” related to a company’s initial or annual flowline check.

While most spills and leaks are not dangerous or life-threatening, Singer said the state could be doing more to protect the public.

“At the end of the day, it is up to all of us; it’s up to the industry to take responsibility for this,” he said. “It’s up to our regulators to do the right thing. And ultimately, if those two fail, then it’s up to us as lawmakers to do the right thing.”

An Inside Energy review of state records revealed operators reported at least 322 spills or leaks linked to flowlines between 2014 and November 2017.

The most recent, statewide, public review of more than 107 thousand lines near buildings showed at least 429 had issues that caused them to fail an integrity test.

Industry leaders say that is a tiny fraction in a massive industry.

“I would argue we have been a safe industry, but you can always get better,” said Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.

“I think the industry did a great job of moving very quickly,” echoed Republican state Rep. Lori Saine (R-Weld).

Saine, who lives in Firestone, would like companies and the general public to have better access to records showing the history of oil and gas infrastructure, especially when it changes ownership from one company to another.

“We want to make sure this [tragedy] never happens again,” she said.

Gov. John Hickenlooper said he hopes enhanced regulations would include testing on a greater number of pipelines and improved safety training. This summer, he also called for a more robust 811 system, which empowers people to learn about underground infrastructure that could interfere with excavation.

“Historically, we didn’t have any information on these flowlines,” he said, “and that became a recipe for disaster. … My guess is there are probably many many things we don’t regulate like that, and this is a constant process of trying to get better at it.”

No Statewide Regulations To Limit How Close Homes Can Be Built to Wells

Colorado regulators limit how close oil and gas wells can be drilled to development like roads, schools, and businesses. The closest that a well can come to a home, for example, is 500 feet. But there is no statewide standard for how close new homes can be built to existing wells.

In Firestone, for example, where the home exploded, the city allows houses to be built just 150 feet away from wells. That home on Twilight Avenue was built just 178 feet from the well that was linked to the incident.

This proximity is not unusual. Our analysis shows that since 2013, on Colorado’s Northern Front Range, at least 220 new wells are within 500 feet of homes. In some cases, operators have been given an exemption which allowed them to drill closer. In other cases, homes have been built near existing wells.

Tensions over this closeness are bubbling up in communities in Northern Colorado.

“We used to be worried about asthma and cancers and ruining our water. Now we’re also worried about our houses blowing up,” said Barbara Mills-Bria, of Lakewood, Colo., during a public meeting with oil and gas regulators in Denver this summer.

The stated intent of Colorado’s setback regulation is to “protect health, safety, and welfare.” While the rule, updated in 2013, does address nuisances like noise and lighting issues, according to rulemaking documents, there wasn’t enough data at the time to address more serious problems like air emissions.

“There was not, in our opinion, sufficient, clear, undisputed scientific evidence to base a setback number on,” said Matt Lepore, Director of the COGCC. “Frankly, nothing would make me happier than [to have] somebody to tell me 1,007.5 feet is safe for everybody. That would be fantastic. That’s not going to happen.”

Are current setbacks adequate to protect health and safety? Researchers tried to answer that question in a 2016 paper published in a journal called Environmental Health Perspectives. They examined existing setbacks in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado ranging from a few hundred feet to over a thousand. The conclusion was that these distances are not always good enough to protect people from risks like air emissions and explosions.

In the aftermath of the Firestone home explosion, regulators are not currently considering making changes to the setback rule. In the absence of state action, some towns like Broomfield, Thornton, and Lafayette are taking on the task of regulating themselves, pushing for greater setbacks within their own city limits.

]]>http://insideenergy.org/2017/12/21/ie-rmpbs-team-up-on-firestone-investigation/feed/0Battle Brews Over Methane Leakshttp://insideenergy.org/2017/08/10/battle-brews-over-methane-leaks/
http://insideenergy.org/2017/08/10/battle-brews-over-methane-leaks/#respondThu, 10 Aug 2017 18:37:38 +0000http://www.insideenergy.org/?p=86706The head of the Environmental Protection Agency visited North Dakota this week on a 25-state listening tour, amid an effort by the Trump administration to roll back a host of environmental regulations.

The latest battle is over leaks of methane and other invisible gases, which sometimes escape from the equipment that’s supposed to contain them at oil and gas well sites.

Last year, she stood at a well site near her home in Mandaree with an infrared camera, which can detect gas leaks. She saw a plume on screen coming from one of the tank batteries next to the well.

“I knew how toxic they were,” she said. “But just to witness it on this camera, it’s like, this is what we’re breathing?”

The Dakota Resource Council has released a new report highlighting its concerns about these leaks. The group wants federal methane rules to go into effect to limit pollution they say is “endangering the health of communities across North Dakota.”

But state health officials point to their own air monitors, which show the leaks have not harmed air quality across the oil patch.

The air is healthy to breathe, even for people living close to oil well sites, said Jim Semerad, manager of permitting and compliance for the North Dakota Department of Health’s Division of Air Quality.

“Our monitors that are portable haven’t shown dramatic rises off site,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything that would cause me concern for those folks.”

While the debate plays out in oil-rich states, it’s also tangled up in court.

The Bureau of Land Management also issued a rule last year to contain leaks and flaring on public and Indian land, but the new administration put that rule on hold.

Likewise, Pruitt is now trying to delay the EPA methane rules. His agency first issued a 90-day stay, which a federal court struck down after environmental groups sued.

Some states, like Colorado and Wyoming, already have rules on their books requiring oil and gas companies to detect and repair leaks.

North Dakota has taken a different approach, getting the industry to take part in a new voluntary program.

“It’s effective,” Semerad said. “The rule would take longer. The emissions were happening. From our standpoint, we wanted the emissions to stop as soon as possible.”

About 80 percent of companies operating in the state’s oil patch are taking part, he said. The program differs slightly by company, but workers look for problems at wells, like spills or hissing noises. Companies submit reports monthly to the state.

While he says the public at large is safe, that’s not always the case for oil workers — some of whom have died from inhaling high concentrations of toxic gases.

So far, Semerad said he believes the voluntary program has been successful. Two years ago when state inspectors would visit a site, he said it was “very common” they would find a leak.

“It is now relatively uncommon to see anything leaking,” he said.

But some are skeptical of the oil industry’s ability to monitor itself, like Lisa DeVille with the Dakota Resource Council. Her concerns come after what she deems a poor environmental record on the part of some companies, as she’s witnessed the aftermath of pipeline spills and lackluster cleanup efforts.

“Industry isn’t reliable,” she said. “They will lie to make sure that they’re covered. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if they would properly do the testing.”

Semerad says North Dakota could create a rule down the road targeting leaks after evaluating its voluntary program.

Meanwhile, the EPA has proposed a two-year delay for its rules. This week marked the end of the public comment period on that proposal. The regulations went into effect at the beginning of this month.

Colorado’s Secretary of State, Wayne Williams, announced today that initiatives 75 and 78 failed to make the November ballot because supporters didn’t collect enough valid signatures. With this news, a heated, well-funded debate over the future of energy development in the state is tabled, for the moment.

Initiative 75 would have given local governments the authority to regulate development. Initiative 78 would have greatly increased the minimum distance between oil and gas operations and structures like homes, schools, and parks. According to a report from the Colorado Oil & Gas Commission, if the setback measure were to have taken effect, 90 percent of land in Colorado would be off-limits to new development.

The Colorado Oil & Gas Association, an industry trade association, is pleased with the outcome. In a statement, President Dan Haley wrote:

“Coloradans have sent a clear message that they don’t want to resolve these complex issues at the ballot box. The good news is that after this long and unnecessary battle, our state emerges as the winner.”

Environmental groups behind the two initiatives didn’t immediately return calls for comment. They have 30 days to appeal the decision to the Denver District Court.

Some serious money has gotten wrapped up in these issues, though the opposition raised 35 times as much money as the committees behind the measures. According to the most recent data available, the committees behind the ballot initiatives had collected $424,021, mostly in contributions from individuals. The committees opposing the initiatives had collected $15,040,665. For more on how the funding breaks down, check out Jordan Wirfs-Brock’s awesome animation.

Here are some key numbers from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office relating to today’s announcement:

98,492 signatures are required to get an initiative on the 2016 November ballot in Colorado. Check out the equation behind that number here.

Petition 75

Total number of qualified signatures submitted: 107,232

From a 5% random sample, 25.7% of signatures were thrown out

Petition 75 is projected to have gotten 80.85% of the required valid signatures

Petition 78

Total number of qualified signatures submitted: 106,626

From a 5% random sample, 27.7% of signatures were thrown out

Petition 78 is projected to have gotten 78.29% of the required valid signatures

According to the Secretary of State’s office, around 30 percent of signatures submitted for most initiatives are found to be invalid. Ben Schler, with the Elections Division, walks us through the complicated, tedious process of signature counting here.

Initiatives 75 and 78 won’t be on the November ballot, but that doesn’t mean the issues of local control and setback distance are resolved. In fact, this fight is an extension of recent legal battles around local control. In 2014, those issues also stayed off the Colorado ballot, thanks to a deal Gov. John Hickenlooper brokered between activists and industry.

A study released by a team of Penn State scientists found evidence that groundwater near a shale gas well in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, was tainted from chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing and drilling for natural gas. The study suggests the chemicals traveled through sideways cracks in the ground.

One of the authors, Susan Brantley, distinguished professor of geosciences at Penn State, said the results were the first to show chemicals used in drilling migrating through rock formations. And they went a good distance—1 to 3 kilometers.

“We really laid out all the data and showed that it did move through the rock at shallow and intermediate depths, and it moved a long way,” Brantley said.

The study used well water data collected on behalf of three families which sued Chesapeake Energy, after the company drilled a series of faulty wells near them in late 2009. They settled with the company for $1.6 million, but refused to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Shortly after the wells were drilled, the homeowners began complaining about bubbling and cloudiness in their water. Some had foaming in their water “like shaving cream,” Brantley said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) investigated; it found natural gas had migrated into the groundwater and cited the company.

Based on these and other violations, Chesapeake agreed to a consent agreement with the DEP in May, 2011, agreeing to pay a $700,000 civil penalty and to donate $200,000 to the DEP’S Well Plugging Fund.

The consent agreement stated that Chesapeake “failed to properly case and cement the gas wells and to prevent the migration of gas into sources of fresh groundwater”

Eventually Chesapeake tried to fix the problems by further cementing the wells.

Families Want Data Analyzed

As part of their settlement with Chesapeake, the three families agreed to sell their homes to the driller. Crucially, they refused to sign the non-disclosure agreement, which would have prohibited them from sharing the results of their water tests with anyone, including scientists.

After the final settlement, Garth Llewellyn, a hydrogeologist with Appalachia Hydrogeologic & Environmental Consulting, which conducted water tests for the plaintiffs, contacted Penn State scientists to see if they would analyze the water. Llewellyn was the lead author of the study.

“There was clearly other issues here. There was unnatural foam discharging from these wells,” said Llewellyn. “We wanted to investigate further.”

The Penn State scientists, which got support for the study from the university and National Science Foundation, found chemical compounds similar to those found in fracking wastewater. They also found 2-n-Butoxyethanol—2BE—a chemical used in drilling fluid and in the hydraulic fracturing fluid for some of the wells drilled by Chesapeake.

The EPA has identified 2-BE as a possible “indicator of contamination” from fracking activities.

The study found nearby gas drilling activities were “the likely cause” of the contamination.

In an emailed statement, Marcellus Shale Coalition spokesman Travis Windle said the industry has improved “through important technological advancements” in the years since the wells in question were drilled.

The authors admit their conclusions have limitations. “It is not possible to prove unambiguously that the (chemicals) and 2-BE were derived from shale gas-related activities,” the paper states. The paper added that no chemicals “were detected above regulatory drinking water standards.”

Foaming Water

Brantley said even if the water didn’t exceed drinking water standards, what came out of the private wells was alarming.

“I’m a geologist—I don’t think you would want to drink this water—if for no other reason than it was foaming,” Brantley said.

Brantley said it was unlikely that the contamination came from deep underground in the Marcellus Shale, since the salts that are so prevalent in that formation were not present in high concentrations. One possibility is that a leaky storage pit may have been the source of the contamination, or it came from the faulty wells that Chesapeake drilled.

The steel and cement casing for the wells only went down about 1,000 feet. Below that, the wellbores were open rock. Brantley believes it was through this open part of the wells that the chemicals may have escaped.

She added that it appeared that safeguards put in place since the wells were drilled may make this type of contamination less likely. In 2011, the state increased its casing requirements, including provisions that required companies to better protect groundwater and prevent gas migration into coal bed seams.

Windle, of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, reiterated this point: “Pennsylvania’s regulations were dramatically strengthened over the past several years—from overall well construction practices, including enhanced casing and cementing requirements, to expanded pre-drill testing, and heightened surface containment measurements—aimed at protecting groundwater.”

Everything is tinged pink this month to raise awareness about breast cancer, and the color is popping up in some unexpected places–like on oil rigs. For the second year in a row, Baker Hughes is showing support for Susan G. Komen Foundation by painting its drill bits pink.

The thousand drill bits being distributed to customers around the world have the slogan: “Doing our bit for the cure” and come with breast health information.

The cause is personal for Debo, who lost his mother to breast cancer when he was a senior in high school.

Baker Hughes has been a longtime supporter of the Susan G. Komen foundation, donating $100,000 to the organization last year. As they announced in a press release, they plan to present another donation at the final Pittsburgh Steelers National Football League “pink-out game” on October 26 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.

While any effort to increase awareness on a disease that affects 200,000 women each year is important, the gesture is making some wonder whether Baker Hughes is using the pink drill bits as a marketing device.

According to the Dallas Business Journal:

EcoWatch Blogger Sandra Steingraber criticized Komen, citing several studies that show increased risks of cancer among roughnecks working on hydraulic fracking operations.

“Here’s what I’m wagering that a roughneck does not learn from the literature shipped with his drill bit this October: I’m betting he does not read about the recent study from the U.S. Center for Disease Control that found dangerous levels of benzene in the urine of workers in the unconventional (aka fracking) oil and gas industry,” Steingraber wrote. “Benzene is a proven human carcinogen.”

This isn’t the only strategy Baker Hughes has implemented to connect with the public and help it’s public image. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company started to list all the chemicals used in their fracking wells to “increase public trust in the process of hydraulic fracturing.”

Health is one of the major concerns when it comes to fracking. As Jordan Wirfs-Brock and Leigh Paterson recently reported, people on both sides of the issue have to get creative to prove their point.

From writing songs about the chemicals in fracking fluid to sipping on frack cocktails, the ploys to scare or appease the public mostly distract them from learning the truth, which isn’t always easy to determine.

What’s Next:

Learn more about how benzene could affect unconventional oil and gas workers.

The United States is on the verge of becoming the world’s top producer of oil – that’s according to the International Energy Agency. But the oil boom is also leading to a boom in toxic oil field waste that can end up in open pit disposal sites. There are increasing concerns over the dangers these disposal sites pose for air quality.

All energy producing states have to deal with an ever escalating amount of waste. In Wyoming, there are 35 commercial waste pits and permits pending on six more. North Dakota shipped 1.75 million tons of oil and gas waste to landfills in 2013. And, while Colorado – like North Dakota – has been tightening regulations on the waste water resulting from drilling operations, the state’s solid waste pits are still left uncovered.

That problem can be seen in the situation facing the residents of Nordheim, Texas, a town of 300 people about 75 miles southeast of San Antonio. Farmers and ranchers gathered recently at the old dance hall there to organize against what they see as an environmental threat to their town.

“They’re going to dump liquid oil field waste, all the chemicals that have to do with fracking,” Rancher Jim Fulbright predicted, “and they have to do something with it.”

Here’s what he’s worried about: two enormous oil waste disposal facilities – one 200 acres and the other 575 acres – proposed for right outside of his town. Retired School teacher Lyn Janssen is worried about her ranch, settled by her family in 1897. “There’s really no reason for our area to become the dump site for the Eagle Ford Shale,” she said.

Nordheim is in the middle of the most productive parts of the Eagle Ford Shale, a geological formation saturated in oil. But because it’s locked in a rocky honeycomb, it was once thought that this oil was too expensive and troublesome to get out of the ground. New drilling technologies like fracking changed that. Each day, 900,000 barrels of oil are produced in the Eagle Ford play. In 2013, it generated $87 billion in total economic output for the state of Texas. And many people in Nordheim, like Fulbright, are also getting oil royalty checks from this oil and gas bounty.

Paul Horn

This map shows the location of the proposed oil and gas waste facility outside of Nordheim, Texas.

“I’m not against fracking,” he said. “I’m not against the oil and gas industry. It’s necessary. The country needs the energy.” The proposed waste facilities near Nordheim and elsewhere in South Texas call for billions of gallons of toxic sludge to be dumped in the plastic-lined pits left open to the air, where fracking waste is allowed to evaporate. What’s left behind is a viscous goop that’s mixed with soil and eventually buried onsite. There are currently at least 67 large commercial surface facilities for oil field waste operating in Texas.

And if you live or work nearby, it’s hard to miss.

“There ain’t no Chanel No. 5 there – it all stinks,” Fulbright said.

It doesn’t just stink – the EPA and others have found that the fumes contain chemicals known to be hazardous to human health, including volatile organic compounds like benzene. But, because oil and gas waste is exempted from federal hazardous waste regulations, most states don’t require monitoring waste pit air emissions. It’s impossible to know whether chemicals are drifting into the air at levels that could affect human health.

The only hope that residents of Nordheim have to stop the pits is to block their permitting at the Texas Rail Road Commission – the state agency that has oversight of the oil and gas industry. So, last month about 30 residents of Nordheim chartered a bus and took the 150-mile trip to Austin to testify at a public hearing about the pits. One-by-one, they stood before the hearing examiner and explained how the proposed waste pits would contaminate their water wells and pollute nearby creeks.

“We have 36 acres of land that’s adjacent to the proposed site. We have a 150-f00t deep water well. It is 60 feet from the property line of the proposed waste facility,” resident Howard Ann Bouman said.

“My husband and I own 54 acres that is bordered by Smith Creek. All of the toxins that are allowed in and out of the facility because they talk about mechanical failure or human error and those things are going to run into the creeks,” Gail Tisdale said.

Also at the hearing was Republican state representative Geanie Morrison, who has represented Nordheim for over 15 years. She expressed her concerns, even though she does believe the state needs these facilities.

“I am not naïve that we always be confronted with the ‘not in my backyard’ position. But this is truly in the backyard of the entire city of Nordheim,” she said.

But as Nordheim had its say, so did the company proposing the pits – Pyote Reclamation Systems. John Soule is their attorney and his argument in favor of the permitting hinged on the fact that the oil field waste going into the pits is considered non-hazardous. He stressed that point five times in the first two minutes of his presentation:

“The waste that will be received,” he said, “is RCRA or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act exempt oil and gas waste, by definition non-hazardous.”

A week after the hearing, the CEO of Pyote Reclamation Systems, George Wommack, expressed confidence about the ruling from the railroad commission. He was representing his company at their booth at the DUG Eagle Ford Conference in San Antonio, a gathering of about 4500 oil industry professionals. Wommack was there pitching his services as an oilfield waste processor.

He re-stated the fact the the company is dealing solely in non-hazardous materials: “They need to understand this is nonhazardous material. It’s mainly rocks and dirt that has come in contact with the hydrocarbon.”

But that’s the key issue in this dispute: Is oil and gas waste hazardous, or not?

Right now, oil and gas waste is officially considered non-hazardous because of a decision made by Congress and the EPA back in 1988 to exempt oil and gas waste from federal regulations. It was a move to spur domestic oil production and keep costs low. Professor Ernest Smith, of the University of Texas School of Law, says it was all about politics. He literally wrote the book – a text book – on oil and gas law and is a specialist in the area.

“The oil and gas companies had sufficient pull that they were able to get it classified as non-hazardous,” he said.

But Smith believes this exemption won’t last forever. He says pressure is building on the federal government to fix it. But that would come at quite a cost to industry, at least a three-fold increase in waste processing costs. That’s why that change isn’t likely to happen in time to keep the pits out of Nordheim.

]]>http://insideenergy.org/2014/10/02/millions-of-tons-oil-and-gas-waste-hazardous-or-not/feed/0Colorado State Of Mind: Solar Challenge, Health Effects Of Frackinghttp://insideenergy.org/2014/09/08/colorado-state-of-mind-solar-challenge-health-effects-of-fracking/
http://insideenergy.org/2014/09/08/colorado-state-of-mind-solar-challenge-health-effects-of-fracking/#commentsMon, 08 Sep 2014 20:26:31 +0000http://www.insideenergy.org/?p=709On the latest episode of RMPBS’ Colorado State of Mind, Inside Energy reporters Dan Boyce and Jordan Wirfs-Brock went on the air to discuss solar energy and the health effects of oil and gas development.

Dan Boyce explains why solar panels may not work during a power outage, what a microgrid is, and what the dropping costs of rooftop solar panels mean for you:

Jordan Wirfs-Brock discusses frac fluid, air pollution, and a research collaboration focused on helping communities make decisions about oil and gas and their health:

]]>http://insideenergy.org/2014/09/08/colorado-state-of-mind-solar-challenge-health-effects-of-fracking/feed/2If You Read Only One Story On Health And Fracking, Read This Onehttp://insideenergy.org/2014/08/29/if-you-read-only-one-story-on-health-and-fracking-read-this-one/
http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/29/if-you-read-only-one-story-on-health-and-fracking-read-this-one/#commentsFri, 29 Aug 2014 19:24:07 +0000http://www.insideenergy.org/?p=693

C European Union 2012

Anti-fracking activitists pose with “fracking flavoured” water outside the European Parliament. Image from Greensefa via Flickr, used with a Creative Commons Attribution License.

For people who live in close proximity to this country’s current oil and gas boom, are there health risks?

It’s a question people are asking from Pennsylvania to North Dakota, from Colorado to Texas, as more and more communities find themselves in the midst of unprecedented energy development.

Inside Energy met with health researchers, scientists and engineers to learn how oil and gas drilling affects your health and to clarify the confusion about the issue. A Colorado-based research collaboration – the first of its kind – is bringing more than 40 experts together to study natural gas development from all angles to understand the risks and benefits.

A lot of concern around the safety of unconventional oil and natural gas exploration – commonly known by the shorthand fracking – centers on frac fluid: It’s the stuff well operators inject into the ground to shake loose the oil and gas.

But anti-fracking activists, sometimes in song, will tell you about the hundreds of scary-sounding chemicals in frac fluid. Here’s Joel Kalma:

Both sides are right. But, according to scientists, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Lisa McKenzie, an epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health, said, “That other 0.5% is important from a health perspective.”

Why?

“Chemicals can have very negative effects in extremely small quantities,” McKenzie said.

And while the long list of chemicals contained in most frac fluids may be intimidating, “The fact that we’ve got 1,000 shouldn’t alarm people,” said Joe Ryan, a professor in engineering at the University of Colorado who studies how drilling affects groundwater.

To figure out what chemicals we need to worry about, Ryan looked at three main factors: toxicity, mobility, and persistence. That means how dangerous those chemicals are to humans, how likely they are to move through the soil and water, and how long they stay in the environment before they degrade.

Using those factors, Ryan said, “We take a list of 1000 and get down to a list of a couple dozen,” Ryan said. “We should be watching for these chemicals, because they could actually show up somewhere.”

And they might make someone sick.

Ryan is the lead researcher on a $12 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study how natural gas development affects communities from all angles: ecology, health, economics, even sociology. In addition to figuring out what aspects of drilling might harm people, the collaboration – called Air Water Gas – also looks at the benefits of the natural gas industry. They are developing a research-driven decision matrix people can use to decide if the drilling industry is something they want in their community, and if so, how to regulate it.

This project grew out of a public demand for unbiased, trustworthy information about drilling.

Water quality and groundwater contamination concerns

A few years ago, the University of Colorado started getting calls from people asking for information about fracking: They wanted to know if they should be worried about their drinking water and they didn’t know where to turn to find answers.

Williams referenced the videos of people lighting their tap water on fire, and said, “a lot of that is real, and what they’re lighting on fire is methane.”

But having methane in your water, while scary and gross, isn’t actually a health hazard. “There are no human health effects for methane,” said Williams. “Unless of course you blow up your house, which is not a good thing.”

Oil and gas extraction activities have the potential to contaminate groundwater. Oil and gas operators take great care to isolate extraction activities and byproducts from the environment. Nevertheless, energy development is an industrial activity conducted by human beings in all the contingency, and uncertainty of the real world….Mistakes and mishaps can introduce contaminants into groundwater systems or mobilize gases and contaminants from elsewhere in the subsurface. The fluids involved in gas extraction – be they introduced fluids, such as those used for hydraulic fracturing, or produced fluids, such as those drawn from deep underground – typically contain salts, metals, and other potential toxins in concentrations that may be harmful to humans.

But groundwater contamination is very rare, and for it to happen, generally something has to go wrong in the drilling process.

There’s another – more serious – concern that hasn’t caught public attention the way flaming tap water has: Air pollution.

Air pollution from oil and gas development is a real risk

John Adgate, a researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health, said water contamination is of less concern then, “the traffic and the noise and air pollution that are around these sites.”

Trucks and construction equipment – in addition to causing traffic accidents – bring diesel exhaust and dust to communities. Extracting and transporting oil and gas can release pollutants like benzene and ozone. Although scientists – including those on Ryan’s team – are still learning how these pollutants move through the atmosphere and interact with the environment, we know they can be dangerous to humans. The National Institute fior Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) has issued a hazard alert to oil and gas workers about dust inhalation, and recently announced results of a study that showed cancer-causing chemical benzene is present in worker’s urine at unsafe levels.

Because oil and gas drilling is happening in residential areas, people who don’t work at well-sites may need to worry about these air pollutants, too.

Science-based policy decisions

When it comes to oil and gas drilling, our track record of using scientific research to make policies and regulations hasn’t been great.

For example, how far do oil and gas wells need to be from homes and schools? This is called set-back distance, and in Colorado, when new rules were decided in 2013 increasing the distance to 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet from schools, Ryan said, “It was freely admitted that no scientific information went into the current choice.”

That’s what the Air Water Gas project aims to change. In the case of the Colorado set-back rule, policy-makers couldn’t use science to drive regulations because at that time it just didn’t exist.

No industry – including oil and gas – will ever be completely free from risk. But understanding those risks is the only way we’ll be able to evaluate them.

“There are risks that we accept and risks that are imposed upon us,” said Ryan. For many communities, the fracking boom has been a risk imposed. “And we get a lot more concerned about the risks imposed upon us than the ones we accept.”

With more science, communities can learn what they should – and shouldn’t – accept.